There are tricks of the trade to ensure the sale of your book via Amazon reviews. Here are our tips for making the most of these.

Amazon Reviews can make or break a book

When someone reviews your book (Self-Publishing Review ranks high – profile here) make sure you click ” Yes” to “Was this review helpful to you?” Amazon ranks its reviewers by helpfulness, so boosting those who review your book will help your review get seen by more people.

Pick the Hall Of Fame reviewers who like your type of book and ask them to review it. You can do this by looking at reviews of books like yours, and seeing if the reviewer has badges. Badges are awarded to top 1000 reviewers and look like this:

Reviewer Badges on Amazon

Spotlight reviews appear once you have six or more reviews. They are a pair of “most helpful favorable” and “most helpful critical” reviews. The selection process for Spotlight Reviews is automated so you can’t suggest a review to Amazon. The review with the most “helpful” votes will get the top spot, although reviews written by Top Reviewers might trump, so make sure your reviewers with the best reviews up get the” helpful” button clicked most. Reviews then appear in reverse chronological order below the Spotlight reviews.

Spotlight Reviews on Amazon

Negative reviews that seem unethical in origin, i.e. personal or from a competing author can be requested for deletion at: community-help@amazon.com.

You can add quotes to your author page, from trade publication reviews. This will give your book weight. You can send an e-book to many publications, but paid reviews will secure you a quote, such as the ones we offer here at SPR.

To add your quotes, go to your Author Central Profile and Edit Biography. You can put your quotes in here under the description of your books and bio.

Author Central at Amazon

Finally, ask friends and family to add their reviews to Amazon and to use the ” helpful” button on the reviews you want your book showcased with. It’s not cheating – everyone does it. And it might just give your review that push to reach the spotlight.

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